I Didn't Want to Look
by Lumosthecat
Summary: A missing scene from “Vector”. As Charlie watches the young mother afflicted with the Spanish flu, struggling to breathe, he is reminded of his mother.


**I didn't want to look**

_Summary: A missing scene from "Vector". As Charlie watches the young mother afflicted with the Spanish flu, struggling to breathe, he is reminded of his mother._

_Dislaimer: NUMB3RS is the creation of Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci and I have no legal rights to the characters and their backgrounds._

_----_

Charlie watches the young mother behind the plastic barricade, as she struggles to take in oxygen, her breathing ragged, her red rimmed eyes dull as she fights for air. He wants to turn away, to erase the scene from his mind, but he can't.

He is strangely drawn to her, watching her suffer and feeling the ache deep in his heart as he wonders if his own mother endured that much pain, too. He finds it ironic that he can't seem to tear his gaze from the sight in front of him when, a year ago, he couldn't bring himself to look at his own mother as she lay dying.

Suddenly, the woman in front of him blurs, and she somehow merges with the image of a dying Margaret Eppes in his mind's eyes. He can see her so clearly, lying so still on the bed, frail and so unlike the vibrant woman that he remembers from his childhood. He recalled the one and only time that he had managed to work up the courage to see her in her room, three months before she had died.

_-flashback-_

Her beautiful hair was gone, the sparkle in her eyes extinguished, and in its place was a look of pain and anguish. He remembered trying to hold her hand and had been shocked by how small and delicate it felt in his, like it would snap if he squeezed too hard. It had broken his heart as he tried to reconcile the fragile woman in front of him to the strong and loving woman who had raised him.

She had been his rock in a stormy, confusing world. She was the only one who got him. And yet she was leaving him and he could do nothing to stop it. He remembered the tears coursing down his face as he bent down to kiss her soft cheek that felt like thin parchment beneath his lips. He choked back sobs as he stumbled back. Clamping his hand to his mouth he ran, not looking back to see if she had awoken and turned blindly into the garage.

Heaving sobs racked him as he looked around him. Blank chalkboards lined the walls, a box of chalk sat waiting for him at the foot of one of them. He grabbed at it desperately, spinning wildly to one of the boards and began to write furiously. The staccato sounds of the chalk mingling with the moans that he didn't even know were coming from him.

Furiously he wrote out the numbers dancing in his head, blanking out the memories of a laughing Margaret as she showed him the koi pond for the first time. He tried to block out the images of his mother, waving to him on his first day of high school. He had been terrified, but she had assured him that he could do it and that Don would be there, too. It was her that he had run to when the pressures of being a nine year old in high school, when the taunts and the teases had been too much for him to bear. She would wrap her arms around him, running her hands through his unruly hair and brushing soft kisses on his head, murmuring the whole time that it would be alright. And he believed her.

His crying continued as he thought of the woman who had taken him firmly by the hand and walked up the steps of Princeton with him, when, at the age of 13, he started his undergraduate degree. She had been so brave, so sure that he could make it, that nothing could stop him.

Dust flew as his writing became more frenzied, as his heart ached for the woman who slept upstairs, who was both his mother and not his mother. He couldn't think about it anymore. It hurt, it hurt so much. His breathing became heavy, panting, as he jumped from one board to the other, writing equation after equation.

Block it out. Block it out. The numbers are all that matter, now. You can't help her. Just keep writing.

Moving to another board, he focused on the numbers, quelling the ache that settled deep inside him. His breathing slowed and steadied as he became mesmerized by the equations. He stopped for a moment, staring at the board, brushing at his face. He never noticed that it was damp with tears, or that he left a streak of chalk dust across his cheek.

_-end flashback-_

In the present, Charlie's eyes are focused unseeingly on the young mother burdened with the same illness that took the life of her son as his mind is caught up in memories. He remembered, as the death of his mother loomed on the family, he had buried himself more and more into his own mind. It had been so numbing for him, a sanctuary of sorts to hide away from reality. He remembered vaguely, as if it happened to somebody else, the angry words of his brother, the curses and the admonishments from him to go see their mom. He didn't want to see her dying.

His breath catches a little at the thought. He hadn't wanted to look, to see, to feel her pain. Instinctively his hand reaches up towards the plastic curtain, towards the woman suffering in front of him, trying to reach out across time and space to that other woman that he had already lost. His heart grieves as he watches the torment that flitters across the woman's face inside the barrier and he wonders again if his mom suffered like that towards the end.

He wanted so badly to believe that she hadn't. He hadn't wanted to look. Watching the laboured breathing of the woman in front of him, he wished fervently that he had been brave enough to be with his mom in the end, so that at least he would know. He hadn't been, and it shamed him immensely. His mother had been there when he had needed her the most and he hadn't been able to do the same for her. He felt his eyes sting with tears and taking his hand away from the plastic, he wipes his eyes and turns away from scene, only to face his brother.

Don looks at him with sympathy in his eyes and Charlie rubs his face even harder to cover up the sorrow that would be so plainly written on it. Don had been brave enough to stand by their mom. He had done what he could not. Charlie envied him that ability, that strength of character that had made him capable of facing their mother's illness and death. Charlie wondered if maybe Don hurt, the same as he did, or maybe even more because he had seen. He had been able to look. He wants to ask him, but the words get clogged in his throat.

Instead he asks, his voice wavering, "Don, did Mom suffer?"

-----

_A/N: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. I couldn't get this scene out of my head after watching my tapes of this particular episode and I felt the need to give voice to the images in my head. All reviews are greatly appreciated. Thanks!_


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